Radio 2 listeners were bemused and enchanted when, five months ago, one of the country's best-loved DJs began dedicating lots of records to his wife.

'I'd just like to play this for Tiggy - because I can,' Johnnie Walker would announce on his Sunday afternoon BBC show, before putting on one of her favourite David Bowie tracks.

Johnnie Walker and his wife Tiggy, who was diagnosed with breast cancer eight months ago

So what had brought on such a public display of affection?

'People must have been thinking: "What on earth has Johnnie been up to. Those two must be having a really bad time,"' says Tiggy, roaring with laughter.

The truth is, however, that they were. Eight months ago Tiggy, 53, was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of breast cancer.

When Johnnie began playing those poignant songs she had just started her first course of chemotherapy, following the removal of a grade three tumour (the worst grade possible). She was, she says, 'at rock bottom'.

But there is rather more to the romantic dedications than that. For these roles of carer and cancer sufferer were once reversed, when Johnnie himself developed life-threatening cancer just months after their wedding and Tiggy put every ounce of her being into supporting him.

She held his hand during chemo, washed him, fed him, cleaned up his vomit, weathered his insufferable mood swings and, when doctors took her aside to warn he might not survive non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, refused to let him die.

When Johnnie began playing songs for Tiggy on his Sounds Of The Seventies show, it was almost a decade to the day since he had returned to the BBC in remission, back in March 2004.

Both illnesses pushed the couple to the brink, and though their marriage ultimately endured, it has left them with a deep understanding of how desperately painful and challenging caring for someone with cancer can be.

That is why they are speaking for the first time about their experiences, in their new roles as patrons for the charity Carers UK, which supports those supporting others.

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Such is the toll Johnnie's illness took on her, that Tiggy even admits: 'I'd rather be a cancer patient than a carer. There's no two ways about it.' She means it. Caring for Johnnie almost destroyed both Tiggy and their marriage. So much so that after the cancer had gone, the couple sought counselling to salvage their relationship.

Nobody who sees the pair together today could doubt that it worked. Their lasting love and delight in each other is quite overwhelming when we meet at the cottage in Shaftesbury, Dorset, where they are living while their nearby Georgian home is renovated.

But physically Tiggy is a very different woman to the one I met ten years ago, when she was so relieved and delighted by Johnnie's recovery.

Tiggy must take 'wonder drug' Herceptin for the next year to reduce the chances of her cancer returning

Her shoulder-length hair is now cropped short and she has gained weight but, incredibly, her joie de vivre is undiminished. And when she laughs, as she does throughout our interview, Johnnie, 69, smiles with deep love at his wife.

'She looks so beautiful doesn't she,' he says. 'I was the one who shaved her head for her when her hair started falling out. I know what it's like when that happens.'

Tiggy's irrepressible spirit is all the more astonishing given the possibility that her cancer will return. She must take so-called 'wonder drug' Herceptin for the next year to reduce the chances. 'The oncologist said: "If the cancer comes back then we can't save you, it's palliative care,"' says Tiggy. 'That's quite shocking, isn't it? But I do feel this is just a little full-stop and here's the new chapter.'

Johnnie and Tiggy pictured shortly after his treatment for cancer ten years ago

A little full-stop? Most of us would be raging against the unfairness of it all. One person in a marriage suffering cancer is tough enough, but both of them... didn't they want to scream?

'I'm not that sort of person,' says Tiggy. 'Whoever said life was fair? The day I was diagnosed I took the dog for a beautiful walk on a lane up through some trees. The birds were singing. I just went: "God, isn't nature amazing."

'Then I thought: "I might not be alive in a year's time to see this."'

Tiggy's diagnosis in December came after she found a lump in her breast and was referred to Salisbury Hospital for tests. She thought it was a cyst. Indeed, she was so confident it wasn't cancer that rather than accompany her to hospital she urged Johnnie to attend a Christmas service for the Pelican Cancer Trust in Basingstoke, where he was doing a reading.

'I've always said to Johnnie I'm never going to get it,' she says. 'Johnnie was worried, but I told him he was being silly.'

He wasn't. In fact, so great was the radiographer's concern, he insisted on a biopsy there and then. She was told it was 99 per cent certain she had cancer. 'I was told I'd have an operation, then chemotherapy, then radiotherapy. I couldn't believe it. I was crying and apologising for crying and said: "I will not have chemotherapy. That is what almost killed Johnnie." I walked down the corridor in floods of tears. But I couldn't phone Johnnie - he would have dissolved and not been able to do the reading.'

When he returned and she relayed the news, Johnnie was, of course, 'knocked for six'. 'You feel so helpless,' he says. 'I was so upset for her. I said: "You can't die. What would my life be without you?" We also made jokes like: "Well, it's an equal opportunities marriage."'

Tiggy had a lumpectomy, to remove the tumour, in January. A lymph node analysis came back clear, showing the cancer had not spread. But as the tumour was aggressive, Tiggy's oncologists prescribed both chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

Her hair fell out during the second course of chemotherapy. 'You shaved it on Good Friday,' Tiggy says to Johnnie, with the sort of fondness most of us would have recalling a particularly romantic dinner.

Tiggy lights up like a Christmas tree when Johnnie compliments her. 'It was very brave of him to shave his wife's head,' she says. 'It's very intimate isn't it? I don't think I could have done it to myself but I trusted Johnnie.

'He was amazing. I became unhinged, particularly during the chemotherapy. It was so horrible. I had a deep-rooted fear of it after I'd seen what Johnnie had been through. I struggled desperately.

'The best way to describe it is your worst hangover times ten with flu thrown in. After the second chemo, I said: "I can't take it any more." I went to see my oncologist and swore vehemently. I said. "I don't care whether I live or not. I'm not going to have it."

Johnnie and Tiggy staying in a beach hut at Mudeford while she had daily radiotherapy at Poole Hospital

'When I eventually agreed to have more Johnnie was so relieved, but he never at any point said: "You must have it."'’ The radiotherapy, in June, meant attending Poole Hospital every day for three weeks so they borrowed a beach hut to cut travelling time.

'I had a bit of a breakdown on the way to the hospital,' says Tiggy. 'I think I was really angry about having to be taken everywhere. I hate being beholden. In truth I was really hard on you.' She looks at Johnnie. 'I said: "I'm not attacking you or blaming you, but I would not have got cancer if I hadn't have married you."

'My life was fairly steady before I met Johnnie. We've had so many dramas - his cancer, losing his Drivetime show and being married to someone in the public eye isn't easy.

'It sounds awful because I love Johnnie and value our marriage more than anything, but I felt lost in my own self. I had to say it.'

Tiggy's cancer has brought her and Johnnie closer

Johnnie was distraught. He joined her that evening at the beach hut and asked if she wanted to separate. 'I did feel bad,' he says. 'When you get married you think you're going to help and lift each other. Tiggy went in for the radiotherapy on her own, howling in tears. When I saw her later I said: "I don't think we can stay married if I've given you cancer."

Thankfully, it wasn't long before they were 'crying in each other's arms'. 'You were so understanding,' Tiggy says. 'You were quite extraordinarily good as a carer.'

And she can judge, having become Johnnie's carer just three months after marrying him, when he was diagnosed with cancer and began gruelling chemotherapy.

'The hardest thing is that I'd been a very busy commercials producer. But when you marry someone in the public eye you suddenly become second fiddle - Mrs Johnnie Walker.

'That was hard to get used to in itself and then, of course, when Johnnie became ill I did nothing else but look after him for nine months.

'On the day he went back to work, it was such a weird feeling. I felt I'd been needed 100 per cent and now I wasn't really needed and I was exhausted. I'd given every ounce of myself making sure he was all right - but I'd lost me. I was grappling around for a purpose.'

Sadly, you see, Tiggy's chance of motherhood had also passed her by. Keen to have a family, they had frozen some of Johnnie's sperm when his cancer was diagnosed. But, by the time he was sufficiently recovered, Tiggy was going through the menopause.

'The gynaecologist said if it's not hereditary, shock sets it off,' she says. 'All my life I thought I'd have four, but you can't dwell on it. You don't get everything in life. In truth I don't know how we would have coped, Johnnie was so tired in the months after his illness.' So much so, he made what he now calls 'strange decisions.' He became desperate to escape London and they bought a farmhouse in Somerset - a disastrous move.

Tiggy and Johnnie on their wedding day in 2002

'We were fish out of water among all these brigadiers and admirals. So Johnnie spent most of his time in the London flat and I went from being depressed and lost in London to being depressed and lost in a farmhouse in the country.'

Eventually, following an argument one Christmas, Tiggy threatened to throw in the towel. Instead, they sought marriage guidance and the counsellor helped them recognise that, in caring for Johnnie, Tiggy had given up her identity.

'I think because of the cancer we started off with me doing everything and that became our roles. Our relationship was lopsided. Johnnie began to understand I needed more than being a housewife and carer.'

She returned to work, they moved to Shaftesbury and the marriage flourished. Her cancer brought them closer still.

'Those weeks in the beach hut were great,' says Johnnie. 'It was early in the year so we had the beach to ourselves and saw some beautiful sunsets. We had walks along the beach with the dog, ate fish and chips, did silly things. It was a fantastic time.

'Now I'm just waiting for the day she says: "I'm really glad I married you."'